Evaluation of field data and simulation results of a photovoltaic system in countries with high solar radiation

Abstract

Abstract:The objective of this study is to examine the conformity of different simulation tools in analyzing the performance of photovoltaic (PV) systems in countries with high solar radiation. Primarily an installed system was evaluated and the results were compared with the simulation results of 3 globally known PV software tools: pvPlanner, PVsyst, and Homer. The parameters evaluated in this study are energy production, specific yield, performance ratio, and capacity factor. Detailed explanations are presented for monthly, seasonal, and annual variation of installed system data and simulation results. Northern Cyprus is selected as a case study due to high solar radiation and duration values.The total annual energy production of the installed 5.76 kW system amounts to 12,216 kWh for the year studied. All the simulation tools appear to underestimate the installed system's energy production and the variances observed are 5.3%, 9.3%, and 7.5% for pvPlanner, PVsyst, and Homer, respectively. Energy production in summer was observed to be about twice the production in winter. The percentage shares with respect to energy production are 34%, 28%, 22%, and 16% in summer, spring, autumn, and winter, respectively. The performance ratio of the system is 80.8%. However, the average performance ratio of the 3 simulators was found to be 78.6%. PVsyst modeled a performance ratio with the least deviation from the system with 79.2%. The specific yield and capacity factor of the installed system are 2121 kWh/kW p and 25.06%, respectively. The average specific yield value and average capacity factor of the 3 simulators are nearly 7% lower than the measured data of the installed system. Different factors led to the difference between real-world application and simulation results. These are discussed in this study in detail.

Predictive analysis of photovoltaic plants specific yield with the implementation of multiple linear regression tool

“…The PV plant is located in Nicosia, the capital city of North Cyprus. It sits on longitude 35.2 N and latitude 33.4 E. Previous studies in CIU presents measured GHI of 1754 kWh/m 2 with ambient temperature of 20.4 C in Cyprus [5].…”

“…PV systems use both diffuse and direct radiation for energy production. PV module general output is measured with peak Watt ratings ( W p ) which is normally obtained by checking highest power of a PV cell/module under laboratory environment of considerable light, complimenting air mass, and minimal cell temperature .…”

The Defining Positive Role of High Cell Temperature on the Efficiency of a Multicrystalline Solar Photovoltaic Array

“…Literature and several research papers show that both power output and efficiency decrease with increase in temperature [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Elminir et al showed that temperature coefficient for current, power and efficiency were about + 40 μA/ o C, -0.4mW/ o C and -0.4%/ o C respectively [2].…”

“…Few researchers have shown that energy yield in summers that is at higher temperature is higher due to dominating effect of irradiance despite decrease in efficiency with increase in temperature [9,10]. Touati et al investigated that decrease in efficiency was about 0.15%/ o C and 0.43%/ o C for monocrystalline and amorphous PV respectively although maximum power was generated during peak hours at high temperature [11].…”

Design and operation of a multifunction photovoltaic power system with shunt active filtering using a single-stage three-phase multilevel inverter

“…Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems range from several tens of kilowatts to hundreds of megawatts. Recently, most PV systems are grid-connected, while stand-alone systems only account for a small portion of the power market [1][2][3][4]. PV grid-connected systems have the benefit of more efficient usage of power generation because there are no additional battery storage losses.…”